USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Families of the Wyoming Valley: biographical, genealogical and historical. Sketches of the bench and bar of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, vol. I > Part 20
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Sutton rented his premises in Exeter, and purchased a mill seat in Kingston, in the now borough of Luzerne.
On the day of the massacre, in the same year, Mr. Sutton re- mained in Forty Fort. Although a Quaker, he believed it to be right to fight in self-defense, and would probably have been in the battle had it not been necessary for him to stay with the women and children, and to take care of the sick. A few days following, Mr. Sutton took his family down the river to Middletown, Lan- caster county, Pa., first building a boat to remove them. He remained in Middletown two years, and then returned to Wilkes- Barre. On his return, he found that his grist mill and house at Exeter had been burned down. His house in Kingston had in some way escaped the flames, but had been stripped of its cover- ing. He immediately set to work and built a house on the lot now occupied by the residence of Irving A. Stearns. There was now no mill in the settlement, and Mr. Sutton set himself to work to build a mill, on Mill Creek, near the river. The mill stood and did good service to the settlement until the celebrated pumpkin flood in October, 1786, when it was carried away. During tl:2 Pennamite and Yankee wars, Mr. Sutton's house in Wilkes-Barre was burned. He then removed across the river, and built a house in Forty Fort, remaining there a short time, when he returned to his home at Mill Hollow, or Luzerne. Soon after, Mr. Sutton, in connection with Dr. Smith, built a forge at Lackawanna, but not succeeding as he desired in making iron, he returned to Exeter, where he died July 19, 1824. Mrs. Sut- , ton died August 20, 1834. She belonged to a noble race of matrons, who endured their full share of the toils and sacrifices of the glorious fight with the dense forests, the wild beasts, and the wild Indians, and the dastardly tories, which resulted in the fruitful fields, quiet homes, flourishing schools, colleges and churches, and the free institutions, which now constitute America the glory of all lands. Mr. Sutton was appointed one of the justices of the peace by Governor Mckean, on the 4th July, 1808, and on the same day sealer of weights and measures for Luzerne county. James Sutton, of this city, is a grandson. Putnam Catlin, who was admitted to the bar of Luzerne county May 27, 1787, the date of the organization of the county, was the husband
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of Polly, the oldest child of Mr. Sutton. He had been a drum- mer boy in the Revolution. In 1797, he was appointed by the Governor Brigade-Inspector for Luzerne county. In 1814, he was a representative in the Legislature of Pennsylvania. He removed to Windsor, N. Y., and from there to Brooklyn, Sus- quehanna county, Pa. He afterwards lived in Montrose, where he was cashier of the Silver Lake Bank. He afterwards removed to Great Bend, where he died in 1842, aged 77 years. He was vice-president of the first agricultural society held in Susque- hanna county, January 27, 1820. George Catlin, the celebrated artist, was his son, and was born in Wilkes-Barre in 1796. He was brought up to the law, and practiced that profession in Philadelphia for two years, but art was his favorite pursuit; and forsaking the law, he established himself in New York as a por- trait painter. In 1832, his attention having been called to the fact that the pure American race was disappearing before the march of civilization, he resolved to rescue from oblivion the types and customs of this singular people. With this object in view, he spent eight years among them, visited about fifty tribes, and brought home more than six hundred oil paintings (in every instance from nature) of portraits, landscapes, and Indian customs, and every article of their manufacture, such as weapons, costumes and wigwams. In 1840, he went to Europe with his collection of paintings ; and in the following year, he published, at London, a work on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians, in two volumes, illustrated with 300 engrav- ings. In 1844, he published The North American Portfolio, con- taining 25 plates of hunting scenes and amusements in the Rocky Mountains and the prairies of America. This was followed, in 1848, by Eight Years' Travels and Residence in Europe, in which he narrates the adventures of three different .parties of American Indians, whom he had introduced to the courts of England, France, and Belgium." In 1853, Mr. Catlin left London for Venezuela, South America. He traversed British and Dutch Guiana, the valley of the Amazon, and other parts of Brazil, the Andes, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, California; reached Vancouver and Queen Charlotte's, and having visited most of the tribes of In- dians of the Pacific coast as far as Kamtschatka and the Aleutian
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Islands, he returned to cross the Rocky Mountains, from San Diego to Santa Fe and Matamoras, thence to Guatemala, to Yucatan, to Cuba, and back to London. In 1861, he published a curious little volume in " manugraph " entitled The Breath of Life, on the advantage of keeping one's mouth habitually closed during sleep; and in 1868, appeared his Last Rambles amongst the Indians of the Rocky Mountains and the Andes. Mr. Catlin died in Jersey City, New Jersey, December 22, 1872. He left two daughters to survive him.
In the minutes of the court in 1794, it is stated that the only attorneys in Luzerne county were Ebenezer Bowman and Putnam Catlin (Rosewell Welles had been appointed judge). That E. Bowman has declined practice, and P. Catlin was about to decline ; that Nathan Palmer and Noah Wadhams, jun., having been admitted in the Supreme Court of Connecticut, be " under the circumstances " admitted.
James Sutton early embraced the doctrines of Methodism, and was leader of the first class organized in the Lackawanna valley, and which consisted of five members. In December, 1782, the decree of Trenton was passed adjudging the right of jurisdiction and preemption to Pennsylvania ; and on the 25th of September, 1786, Luzerne county was established by the Legislature of Pennsylvania. On the 27th December, a supplement was passed providing that Timothy Pickering, Zebulon Butler, and John Franklin notify the electors that an election would be held to choose a counselor, member of assembly, sheriff, coroner, and commissioners, on the first day of February, 1787. Oaths of allegiance were to be taken by the voters; and provision for the election of justices of the peace was made.
Col. Pickering was one of the most eminent men in the Union. Having the confidence of Washington and congress, he had executed with fidelity and approbation the office of Quartermaster General in the army. A native of Massachusetts, after the peace he settled in Philadelphia, becoming a citizen of Pennsylvania, and was selected, in addition to his great abilities and weight of character, for the reason that he was a New England man, to organize the new county, and introduce the laws of the state among the Wyoming people. He was subsequently Secretary of War and Postmaster-General of the United States.
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Col. Butler, with great prudence, had kept himself aloof from all active measures of opposition. A captain in the old French war, a colonel in the revolutionary contest, having served with reputation and retired with honors; ambition having been satis- fied, and age cooled the fervor of his ardent temperament, he desired peace ; he longed ardently for repose, if it could be ob- tained with safety to his neighbors and credit to himself.
Col. Franklin, except in education and polish, was in no respect the inferior of Pickering ; and it was a wise, though as it proved an unavailing stroke of policy to endeavor to conciliate the great Yankee leader, by naming him as one of the deputies to regulate the elections. But Col. Franklin was too deeply committed in interest and pledged faith to the grand scheme of establishing a new state to take a new oath of fidelity to Pennsylvania, and, either directly by himself or through the agency of his attached partizans, every obstacle short of absolute force was interposed to prevent the election being held. And now, for the first time, was presented the spectacle equally gratifying to foes and painful to friends of open and decided hostility among the Wyoming people. Whatever difference of opinion may exist in respect to the justice of their claim, no liberal mind could have traced their arduous course through toil and privation, through suffering and oppression, through civil and foreign war, and observed the fortitude, fellowship, and harmony among themselves that had prevailed, without a feeling of admiration for rare and generous virtues so signally displayed. In an equal degree was the mor- tification at the spectacle now presented. Col. Pickering came with assurances that, on the introduction of the laws and the organization of the county by the election of proper officers, which of course implied the oath of allegiance, measures of com- promise would be forthwith adopted. Probably three-fourths of the ancient people sided with him, and were in favor of submis- sion to the law. Among these were Col. Butler, Col. Denison, the Hollenbacks, the Rosses, the Williamses, the families of Carey, Gore, Nesbit, and others ; while Franklin, the Jenkinses, the Slo- cums, Satterlee, Dudley, and others, especially the residents up the river, wished to defeat the election, insisting that confirmation of title to the settlers should precede, and not be left to follow.
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complete submission to the power of the state. It was a day of high excitement even for Wyoming, indeed of riotous commo- tion. Many a stalwart Yankee was engaged in combat fierce, and sometimes bloody, though not mortal, with a former friend, by whose side he had fought. In the midst of the wild uproar, when overwhelming force was apprehended, Col. Butler mounted his war steed and rode up and down amid the crowd, exclaiming : "I draw my sword in defense of the law ; let every lover of peace and good order support me." In despite of opposition, the elec- tion was consumated. Col. Nathan Denison was elected to the Supreme Executive Council, John Franklin was chosen Member of Assembly, and Lord Butler, High Sheriff.
Thus, Luzerne being politically organized, courts established and the laws introduced under the auspices of Colonel Pickering sustained by the confirming law, he proceeded with wisdom and promptitude to conciliate the good will of the people-to assuage passion; to overcome prejudice; to inspire confidence. If Frank- lin was busy, Pickering was no less active. Without in the slightest degree lessening his dignity by unworthy condescen- sion, he yet rendered himself familiar; talked with the farmers about corn and potatoes, and with their wives about the dairy, maintaining his own opinions with zeal, yet listening to others with respect. "He was no way a proud man," was the general expression of the ancient people. But they thought he farmed rather too much by books, and smiled to see him cart into his barn damp clover to cure by its power of generating heat in the mow. How entirely he sought to conform to the simple habits of the people is shown by the record in his own handwriting that Timothy Pickering and some other citizens "were elected fence viewers and overseers of the poor." Franklin meanwhile, with characteristic industry, visited from town to town, from settlement to settlement, and from house to house, kindling by his burning zeal the passions of his adherents to resist the laws, not by open violence, but by avoiding to commit themselves by taking the oath of allegience or participating in any measure that should seem to acknowledge the jurisdic- tion of the State, unless some law more comprehensive, liberal, and specific should first be enacted to quiet the settlers in their
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lands. At length a proposition was made and acceded to by both parties, that the whole people should be called together and a general meeting be held to talk over the matter in common coun- cil, a sort of ancient "Town meeting," though not "legally warned," to hear speakers on either side, and, if possible, to pre- serve union among those who had so long fought and suffered together, now separating into the most exciting and acrimonious divisions. Old Forty Fort was chosen as the ground. The day fixed, the north and the south, the east and the west, poured forth their anxious hundreds, plainly, nay, rudely dressed, for they were yet very poor, but with firm tread, compressed lip, and independent bearing, for though rough and sun burnt (on this great occasion who would stay at home?), they were at once a shrewd and a proud, as they were a hardy and brave, people. A stand was erected for the moderator, clerk, and speakers, and James Sutton was called on to preside. Colonel Pickering, assisted by the Butlers, the Hollenbacks, the Williamses, the Nesbits, and the Denisons, appeared as the advocates of law and compromise. Colonel Franklin, supported by the Jenkinses, the Spaldings, the Satterlees, and the Dudleys, came forth the cham- pions of the Connecticut title. Colonel Pickering first ascended the rostrum and opened the meeting by an able address, urging every motive in his plain, common sense, strong and emphatic manner that could operate leading to a fixed government of law and freedom from harrassing contests for their homes. He pledged his honor, dearer than life, that Pennsylvania was honest in her pur- pose, sincere in her offer of compromise, and that full faith might be reposed in her promise. Colonel Jenkins, in his brief and sen- tentious way demanded, "What security have we that if we comply and put ourselves into your power, the State won't repeal the law and deal as treacherously as in the case of Armstrong ?" Colonel Franklin now rose and replied with all the bitterness he was master of. Dwelt on the justice of the Connecticut title; the land was their own, purchased by their money, their labor, and their blood, the sufferings of the settlers, the wrongs and insults they had received from Pennsylvania; he set forth and declared the terms of compromise hollow and deceptive, and in no measured strains denounced all those who took part with
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Pickering. At this moment passions, long with difficulty sup- pressed, over-powered all prudential considerations, and Colonel Hollenback, one of the earliest and bravest of the settlers, drew the butt of his riding whip and aimed a blow at Franklin's head. Caught by some friendly arm it missed its aim, but the whole meeting was instantly thrown into wild confusion. The old argu- ment of physical force was not yet quite out of date, and in the absence of fire-arms each man ran to the grove hard by and cut a club. Many blows were dealt out on both sides, but were so adroitly parried off that no heads were broken. There was a general melee; Mr. Sutton was driven from the stage and disap- peared. Supposing that he was spirited away and was about to be victimized by some hair-brained partizan of Franklin, a party scoured the woods and by places, and found him now left to himself. A rather informal vote to sustain the laws of Pennsylva- nia and accept the proposed compromise was passed and the gath- ering dispersed.
Thomas Smith, the ancestor of William Hooker Smith, was a native of Newport, Pagnell, Bucks, England, emigrated to Amer- ica about 1710, and located in the city of New York. He, with a few others, forsook the ministry of Anderson, and by the aid of the trustees of Yale College obtained Jonathan Edwards, then 19, to preach for them. Mr. Edwards referred with delight to his pleasant intercourse with Madam Smith and her son John, and when preaching in New York he made Mr. Smith's house his home. John Smith and Edwards were about the same age, and there sprang up between them a warm friendship, which lasted through life.
Rev. John Smith, the father of William Hooker Smith, and son of Thomas Smith, was born in Newport, Pagnell, Bucks, England, May 5, 1702. He graduated from Yale College in 1727, and was ordained minister at Rye, N. Y., December 30, 1742.
Some years after Mr. Smith removed his residence from Rye to White Plains, but continued to preach at Rye on alternate Sabbaths, riding to and fro on horseback. He was a man of rare excellence, able, earnest, consistent and godly. In 1763 he added the church at Sing Sing to his charge, where he occa-
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sionally preached for the next five years. He died at White Plains, N. Y., February 26, 1771. His remains lie in the church yard, and on the tomb it says: "First ordained minister of the Presbyterian persuasion in Rye and the White Plains," adding that "worn out with various labors he fell asleep in Jesus."
William Hooker Smith, M. D., removed from the Province of New York to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in 1772, where he pur- chased land in 1774. As a surgeon and physician, his abilities were of such high order that he occupied a position in the colony as gratifying to him as it was honorable to those enjoying his undoubted skill and experience.
With the exception of Dr. Sprague he was the only physician in 1772 between Milford and Sunbury, a distance of one hun- dred and fifty miles. It is here worthy of remark that Joseph Sprague, M. D., came from Hartford in 1771, and for a period of thirteen years (with the exception of the summer of 1778) lived near the Lackawanna between Spring Brook and Pittston in happy seclusion, fishing, hunting, and farming, until, with the other Yankee settlers, he was driven from the valley in 1784 by the Pennamites. He died in Connecticut the same year. His widow, known throughout the settlement far and wide as " Granny Sprague," returned to Wyoming in 1785, and lived in a small log house then standing in Wilkes-Barre on the southwest corner of Main and Union streets, now occupied by the brick storehouse and dwelling owned by the estate of Andrew Kesler, deceased.
The formation of Luzerne county created positions of trust and honor, among which was the magisterial one; and although the Doctor was a Yankee by birth, habit, and education, such confidence was reposed in his capacity and integrity that he was chosen the first justice in the fifth district of the new county, and also one of the judges of the Court of Common Pleas. His commissions, signed by Benjamin Franklin, then President of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, bears date May 27, 1787. Both the patriotic spirit and activity of Dr. Smith are shown by the fact that while he was relied on as chief medical attendant by the settlement, he yet accepted and exercised the post of captain commanding in Wilkes-Barre the "old reforma- does," as the aged men were called who associated to guard the
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fort. In 1779 he marched with the troops under General Sulli- van into the Indian country along the upper waters of the Sus- quehanna, and by his cheerfulness and example taught the soldiers to endure their hardships and fatigues, taking himself an earnest part in that memorable expedition which brought such relief to Wyoming. Nor did Congress, prompted by noble impulses, forget his services as acting surgeon in the army, when in 1838, $2,400 was voted to his heirs. That his mind, active, keen, and ready, looked beyond the ordinary conceptions of his day is shown by his purchased right in 1791 to dig iron ore and stone coal in Pittston long before the character of coal as a heat- ing agent was understood, and the same year that the hunter Gunther accidentally discovered "black stones" on Bear Moun- tain, nine miles from Mauch Chunk. These purchases, attracting no other notice than general ridicule, were made in Exeter, Plymouth, Pittston, Providence, and Wilkes-Barre, between 1791-8. The first was made July 1, 1791, of Mr. Scott, of Pitts- ton, who, for the sum of five shillings, Pennsylvania money, sold "one-half of any minerals, ores of iron, or other metal, which he, the said Smith, or his heirs or assigns may discover on the hilly lands of the said John Scott, by the red spring."
Old Forge, now in Lackawanna county, derived its name from Dr. Smith, who, after his return from Sullivan's expedition, located himself permanently here on the rocky edge of the Lack- awanna river, where first in the valley the sound of the trip ham- mer reverberated, or mingled with the hoarse babblings of its water. The forge was erected by Dr. Smith and James Sutton in the spring of 1789. The forge prospered for years; two fires and a single trip hammer manufacturing a considerable amount of iron, which was floated down the Susquehanna in Durham boats and large canoes. The inpure quality and small quantity of ore found and wrought into iron with knowledge and machin- ery alike defective; the labor and expense of smelting the raw material into ready iron, in less demand down the Susquehanna, where forges and furnaces began to blaze; the natural infirmities of age, as well as the rival forge of Slocum's, at Slocum Hollow, now Scranton, all ultimately disarmed Old Forge of its fire and trip hammer.
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After leaving his forge he removed up the Susquehanna, near Tunkhannock, where, full of years, honor, and usefulness, he died July 17, 1815, among his friends, at the ripe age of 91 years. The Doctor was a plain, practical man, a firm adherent of the theory of medicine as taught and practiced by his sturdy ances- tors a century ago. Armed with huge saddle bags rattling with gallipots and vials and thirsty lance, he sallied forth on horse- back over the rough country calling for his services, and many were the cures issuing from the unloosed vein. No matter what the nature or location of the disease, how strong or slight the assailing pain, bleeding promptly and largely, with a system of diet, drink, and rest, was enforced on the patient with an earnest- ness and success that gave him a wide-spread reputation as a physician. The truth seems to have been that to great skill in his profession he united a large share of that capital ingredient, good common sense. In religious belief Dr. Smith was a pre- destinarian in the strictest sense of the word. In his will, writ- ten by his own hand, and dated March 19, 1810, he uses the following language: "I recommend my soul to Almighty God that gave it to me, nothing doubting but that I shall be finally happy. My destiny I believe was determined unalterably before I had existence. God does not leave any of His works at ran- dom, subject to chance, but in what place, where or how I shall be happy, I know not," and at the close of his will the following: "Now, to the sacred spring of all mercies, and original fountain of all goodness, to the Infinite and Eternal Being, whose purpose is unalterable, whose power and dominion is without end, whose compassion fails not, to the High and Lofty One Who inhab- its eternity and dwells in light, be glory, majesty, dominion, and power, now and forevermore. Amen."
The late Hon. Isaac S. Osterhout, founder of the Osterhout Free Library of this city, was a grandson of Dr. Smith, and Hon. James Ross Snowden, at one time Speaker of the House of Rep- resentatives at Harrisburg, Treasurer of the State, and later Director of the United States Mint at Philadelphia, was a great- grandson.
George Reynolds Bedford, who at this writing is less than 44 years of age, bears a name as well known and respected
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throughout Luzerne county as that of any member of his pro- fession here located. This honorable distinction he owes com- - binedly to his careful early training and a nervous spirit of ambition and fearlessness of obstacle inherited from an ancestry whose possession of these characteristics made many of them conspicuous figures in our local history. There are those who rail at the study of genealogy-who insist that it is at best but an idle search, and that generally its pursuit is spurred solely by the weakest of vanities. "The high ancestral name, and lineage long and great," these scoffers say, being so frequently descended to most unworthy sons, convey no merit or mark of it. Man is what he makes himself; not what he was made at birth. The ever ready nine numerals are called into argument, and, assuming the average life of man to be 30 years, it is calculated that each century and a half of the past has made sixty-two ancestors for the child born into the world, so that it has then in its veins, but one sixty-second of the blood of the head of the house from whom it has lineally come through the five generations. Of the head of the house, ten generations or three hundred years dis- tant, but one two-thousand-and-forty-sixths of the blood remains. All this is logic run mad. Men of broadest minds are the pro- genitors of idiots, misers beget spendthrifts, a Hercules is father to a born paralytic, but to assume that there is not a rich in- heritance in good blood, or that vital essence which, in consider- ing the question of ancestry, we ignorantly call blood, is to dispute that there is progression and improvement in civilization and Christianity. Men rise to loftiest heights from lowliest beginnings, but a careful study will inevitably make plain that the germ of their greatness came to them from the mother's womb, and proportionally signal failures of man and womanhood fol- lowing proportionately auspicious beginnings are as surely trace- able to the same source. That genealogical record which exhibits richness of achievement begets a posterity capable of greater achievement, and the exceptions in this, as in all else, but prove the rule. It is not, however, to the name alone of an ancestry, or the position held by it, that we must look for the criterion to estimate the quality of the stuff of which its des- cendants are made. "The wives of kings, though violating the
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